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For some citizens, idly watching in hopes of seeing a politician run amok under pressure, last week's presidential debate must have been like tuning in to a baseball game and getting a cricket match. It was so full of facts and factoids that only fact-checkers and campaign professionals could tell who was scoring points. But it gave voters an accurate picture of both candidates and their philosophies—if the voters were listening carefully at a couple of key moments.

Those who listened attentively could understand that President Barack Obama believes in the ability of government to invest our money for future growth and the well-being of citizens, especially those who did not start off with lots of natural or parental advantages. It was equally clear that challenger Mitt Romney believes in the ability of citizens to manage their own affairs, as long as government stays out of the way, except to pick up the pieces.

Obama called for "economic patriotism," which includes rewarding companies that create jobs in the U.S. and punishing those that operate overseas. He wants to reduce the deficit, but his eye is more focused on revenues necessary to invest in solar energy, windmills, and biofuels, to hire 100,000 math and science teachers, and to expand local community colleges. In a deft reversal of an old attack on Republican economics, Romney summed it up as "trickle-down government."

Romney made his point this way in a discussion of Medicare: "I'd rather have a private plan. I'd just as soon not have the government telling me what kind of health care I get. I'd rather be able to have an insurance company. If I don't like them, I can get rid of them and find a different insurance company. But people will make their own choice."

Manifold Misunderstandings

Neither candidate really understands the other's point of view. Faith in competition? Faith in government's ability to make wise investments? The enemy spouts pious nonsense.

Obama simply dismissed Romney's attacks on the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law. He showed no sign of being able to imagine that a well-intentioned law could add too much regulation or that opponents might have different ideas about the right thing to do about risky banks. For Obama, it was Dodd-Frank or nothing; for Romney, Dodd-Frank was "the biggest kiss that's been given to New York banks."

With equal obtuseness, Romney professed not to be able to understand why the Democrats spent 2009 and part of 2010 enacting Obamacare "instead of fighting for jobs for the American people." He should be able to understand that most Democrats have been trying to get the country to approve national health insurance since the Truman administration, and he should have expressed the majority's continued opposition to that idea.

Those jobs and that fight for the American people were the occasion for both candidates to cover themselves with sentimental goop.

The choking point came early, when Romney recalled meeting people who were unemployed and who begged, "Can you help us?"

The only truthful answer to that question was a firm "no." A presidential candidate cannot help anybody, and even if he's elected with a pliant Congressional majority, the government has much less control over employment, indeed less control over the whole economy, than poseur politicians would like us to believe.

Plowing Old Ground

Americans should recognize that Obama's deficit-driven economic stimulus failed, but we also should be skeptical about the power of austerity or the power of tax cuts or the power of presidential pontification to do any better. By 2008, the U.S. had created three major bubbles, in stocks and then in housing and banking. It was and remains difficult to recover from the busts. Whether a president prefers government solutions or exuberant free enterprise matters a great deal philosophically and may produce different results in the long term, but it doesn't matter much when it comes to quick results in the practical sphere of jobs and GDP.

Obama credited himself and his administration with saving the auto industry with the emotional testimony that "the auto workers that you meet in Toledo or Detroit take such pride in building the best cars in the world—not just because of a paycheck, but because it gives them that sense of pride, that they're helping to build America."

That may be what they tell a touring president, but he shouldn't pretend to believe it. Whatever they believe in Toledo and Detroit, Obama shouldn't ignore the newest and most efficient part of the American auto industry—the factories that turn out cars for Japanese, German and Korean brands. Their workers are building the new globalized America.

Missing Points

The strangest thing about the debate was how many economic issues were entirely ignored by both candidates. Perhaps they agreed not to disagree?

Obama never mentioned Romney's dismissal of the 47% of Americans who will never vote for him or Romney's idea that too many citizens are receiving too many benefits and paying little or no income taxes for them.

Romney did not go after Obama's "you didn't build that" admonition, which expressed the president's belief that businesses don't build themselves without the aid of government investments in infrastructure and other public goods.

Romney's weak jabs at four years of trillion-dollar deficits prompted Obama's weak defense that he had inherited one of them. The candidates seemed to agree that all that deficit spending was essential to save the country from ruin.

Neither candidate had anything meaningful to say about the "fiscal cliff," those automatic tax increases and spending cuts that take effect at the end of the year that would chop projected deficits in half. Their claims of willingness to work with hostile members of Congress rang hollow, considering that a bipartisan compromise built the fiscal cliff last year.

The cliff, unfortunately, is the next best thing to governing, which is something neither candidate seems ready to do.